The Uncertain Future of WordPress
Once the industry darling, WordPress1 has experienced a lot of upheaval lately. With the Founder rebelling, WP Engine making life difficult, the multitude of community concerns, and its falling marketshare, the future is unclear.
After reaching a peak marketshare of 43.3% in March 2022, usage has shown signs of decrease in the last 3 years. Should this trend continue, WordPress may not be able to justify it's support beyond a handful of dedicated die-hards.
Tensions between WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine have escalated. Mullenweg criticized WP Engine for insufficient contributions to the open-source project, leading to legal disputes and community concerns.
Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, has significantly reduced its contributions to the WordPress open-source project, citing resource constraints and ongoing legal battles. Their shift to paid services and a corporate model is in stark contrast to the CMSs community and open-source model. Automattic's influence may further erode the community energy to sustain and contribute to the future of WordPress.
With the ongoing issues, declining use, mixed ecosystem, and security concnerns, what is in store for WordPress? Well, in our opinion, it will continue as a legacy product for the near future. It has a strong base of users and contributors who 'grew up' with the product. We tend to stick with what we know.
At Guardian Solutions LLC, we have always held Joomla2 as a superior alternative. Starting a company with security built in from the ground up, not an afterthought, WordPress was never an option. Too many third party themes and plugins are not properly tested nor updated, and with so many sites on WP, it has a huge attack surface.
If your business website is created in WordPress and you have concerns or need support,
(although we do not develop in WordPress, we are WP Experts and host and maintain many WP sites for clients.)
Give us a call for a FREE Consultation. 719.368.4887
1WordPress is a Registered Trademark of Automaticc and the WordPress Foundation.
2Joomla is a Registered Trademark of Open Source Matters, Inc.